Let me first say I apologize for the lengthy post & I am new to the hobby...really new so I am learning on the fly and unfortunately my fish are on the "front lines". I got my tank set up and brought home 5 neon and 5 head and tail-lite Tetras. Upon adding the fish to the tank and adding supplements to the water to get the bacteria going, I am now towards the end of the first week w/ the fish. Everything seem to be going well, but the last two days I have lost two of the head and tail-lite tetras. Realizing something is a miss & after reading forums and realizing I don't know what I am doing, I quickly went out and got a test kit.I did the test on my water and got the following readings: Nitrate 10, Nitrite 0, Total hardness (GH) 75, total Alkalinity (KH) ~250 and PH at 8.0. With my tank so new and w/ these being my first fish I am assuming the nitrogen cycle is starting to get where it needs to be because the nitrite is 0 and the nitrate looks like it is starting to creep towards 0 as well. What alarms me is the Alkalinity and the PH. I don't have a bench mark to go off of for my tap water. I will have that tomorrow evening when I do the test on the cup of water I set out overnight, but I read that it is useless to try to get the PH to a certain level and it can even be dangerous, furthermore I am not sure what to do for the alkalinity. I don't want to douse the thing in chemicals, but I don't want to wipe out all my tetras either. Anyhow, any help would be greatly appreciated as I now try to do some damage control and save my poor fish!
FYI, I have a 30 gallon tank w/ a power filter. I took out all the rocks and shells that I had because I read they could be leeching things into my water, so I want to test them prior to re-installing them in the tank.
FYI, I have a 30 gallon tank w/ a power filter. I took out all the rocks and shells that I had because I read they could be leeching things into my water, so I want to test them prior to re-installing them in the tank.